Archive for February, 2009

I think respect is important, everyone deserves a place in our system, and that implementing policies toward this goal need to distinguish carefully between enforcing respect and inclusiveness and the actual goals of respect and inclusiveness.

Respect is something we are all due but we can identify pockets of people who regularly get less of it. Respect is something which causes us to avoid offending others but it is also something which causes us to tolerate some offenses because some offenses are matters of taste. Also to be respectful, I think there is a duty to continue to try and grasp opinions you as an individual do not have. Respect has a few conflicts which I will explore here. Respect treads closely to fairness because it has equalizing quality.

Everyone deserves a place in our system, that’s my opinion. If a human being is alive and within our national boundaries, that person needs a place in our system. Being outcast is painful and disrespectful. Also, humans have a host of issues that are greater than us such as the state of the planet and the human race, fighting diseases and accomplishing continual progress for our quality of life.

Distinguishing between our goals and our way toward those goals is important. Respect at the price of liberty is not respect nor is it understanding. People censored are not being respected nor are they buying into the system. The same goes for people incarcerated. If the people are in our system, then they need a way to buy in at any time without penalty. People who cannot exist within our system need to be understood and if they can not be reconciled, I think they should be exiled.

However, I think many times the goal of establishing respect overlooks the fact that people need to be able to voice their opinions. There are two phases to respect in this regard: getting information about where we are at in terms of respect and opinion, and affecting change. So I establish a fine line between actions and statements. I want people to speak what’s on their mind, especially in places like homes or in conversations. I want to know how people are. And to do that I need to offer no penalty for this honesty. But when a job is withheld or an opportunity denied for a disrespectful reason, you can expect my condemnation. And those people who think white people deserve more or that men should expect dominion over women or that because Abraham was straight everybody else has to be as well, you’ll be overthrown. Just you wait. Obama is only one piece in that strategy. There are more women in leadership than ever. And Abraham also married his sister. Think about it.

The following is intended as a satire. I think women are insufficiently respected and I don’t know what to do about it. Furthermore, it is hard to get relevant information from women because some of them appear satisfied with the current system. I have girls of my own and if I were a girl, I would be overthrowing all sorts of concepts. I do that now but I have white and male privilege. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are as many women as men and they still end up being treated like minorities.

Okay, everyone knows girls and women have cooties. That’s why we subjugate them and keep them separate. That’s why American women only get to date American men and American men can date anybody they want. It’s the reason we are allowed to have a double standard. I mean, it’s more expensive to have women in the workplace because we have to wash our hands more often to keep cooties from infecting us.

Girls know they have cooties. You see the way they compete and snub each other. We’ve all seen the “you don’t deserve that you bitch” look going from one girl’s eyes to an unsuspecting other female. You can’t take them anywhere. And to make matters worse, cooties often accumulate near the buttock region or the chest region which accounts for most of the reason we men have to check those areas out extra carefully. Is that a cootie cesspool or what? “With the angling of the buttocks that should have a reduction value so that woman likely carries .7 times the standard amount of cooties.”

Females can’t see cooties. All they see are tits and ass and they feel objectified. That balances out the fact that men can’t see reason, we only see what we want and whether or not it has cooties. In muslim countries, cootie-carriers are kept in bags to minimize contact. That’s a good idea.

Females are typically smaller and weaker, which doesn’t make sense really. They get sexually assaulted all the time, you think they would take physical fitness and self defense seriously. But most gyms carefully screen their women for cooties and as a result, women don’t feel very welcome.

I read some article about how to make a female suicide bomber. All you have to do is sexually assault her which makes her feel worthless and then point out that blowing herself up is a good way to get some honor back. Again it doesn’t make sense on a variety of levels. For one, being sexually assaulted might make a woman feel worse, but it doesn’t make her worthless. She’s worth the same amount. And if you want to look at it in a rather demented way, she might be worth more if she’s deemed a point of obsession by another person. Also, explosions don’t desanitize cooties. Explosions turn cooties into an aerosol which is just bad for everybody.

Let’s throw the exact statistics out of the window, we can agree that half of all people are men and half of all people are women in practice. Forget racism for the moment, minorities don’t even add up to 20% of the population in America according to the last time I checked. Women are 50%-ish, black people represent less than 15%. This is no reason to be racist, the point here is that we discriminate against women who represent 50% of the population and black people (among other minorities) which represent less than 15% of the population. Where should we start? Plus 50% of those minorities are women, so guess what, that halves our racism by destroying our sexism.

But I propose we start with racism because race is clearly an imagined concept (google it, we are genetically too similar to people of other races) mixed with ethnic nurture and gender differences are very real. Plus, minorities will assemble on our asses. They will violently and peacefully protest while kicking our asses in basketball, football, baseball, golf, Olympic running, kung fu, manufacturing, hotel management and now world domination (re: Obama). Women are too busy fighting off their cooties to notice that they’ve been pigeoned holed into lives as nannies and bangholes.

Some of them notice, but they are fewer and farther between and didn’t pay attention to my points about physical fitness, and self defense. And most of them don’t realize it right away because our institutionalized quaranteen of cooties is mostly working even though the cootie-carriers are getting cleverer.

Why don’t women address this issue, when they clearly equal or outnumber us? Why don’t they create businesses and jobs and environments where cootie-carriers are not subjugated? In part this is because cooties damages the brain, and in part because the rest of us work very hard to ensure that doesn’t happen.

We love women so much. They are sexy, attractive, they think differently, we associate positive elements of nuture, they seem to multitask very effectively. I’m under the impression that those little diseased by gender counterparts even work harder. It’s a shame they have cooties. It’s a shame we haven’t developed a cure. And it’s as much a shame that they haven’t demanded one or developed a whole alternate economy that works by and for cootie-carriers.

I call life how I see it. I see it progressively and I try out new frameworks in an effort to get closer and closer to the truth of whatever is out there or whatever core truths can be found.

So here I am toying with a personal flavor of nihilism because no matter how much I think of one thing or another thing, I find myself vividly aware that the meaning applied is relative and changing as we grow and review. Some funny jokes are offensive. Some of our history is less glamorous. The knights of the round table didn’t know how sexist they were so their chivalry becomes moot.

I’m helpless to protect women from having acid thrown on their faces or other retarded acts of the lack of sophistication coming from world news. I am just as helpless to reduce the United States large percentage of murderers.

However, change has to come from somewhere if we are to see the people of the future in better circumstances. But in the long run, though we try for better circumstances, there are many things on the cosmic sense that can destroy us by shattering our earth or something. We live on average 75 years and then no one knows what happens to us, but we could just cease to be. All we know is this form stops. Your form will stop too. Look around, after thousands of years we still have mass murders, serial murders, police brutality, racism, religiously charged violence, violent political upheavals, and psychotic fundamentals. After all these years, I think humans have a long way to go to live civilly and use reason as their tools of compromise and inclusiveness.

But it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to change it. I have to play my role. It’s not going to revolutionize the world but it might be a pixel in a picture of hope. I don’t need meaning to play my role. I like the idea of improving things even temporary things like our lives or the pleasantness of today. I can only trust in a series of moments of life. I can’t even trust how many. I’m here and one day that will stop. I don’t have to worry because I’m being me. I’ve chosen to let that matter and to ignore the rest.

In a world of conformity and dissent, the middle ground is hard to appreciate and it’s constantly moving one way or the other. People blog their heads off just like people spout out nonsense. Voices include those of the Howard Sterns, diplomats, advocates, thoughtful people, trolls, and all those people on their off days. Opening the browser and looking for opinions will lead quickly to a cause, a voice of a stranger proposing that something in this world could be a little better somehow.

Who doesn’t want babies to be raised in wanted homes? In simple scenarios, the answers are so obvious. Every little human should have the best odds to be a big human. Every ethnic, cultural, or flavor of person should be granted as much leverage as possible to achieve the baseline goals everyone should aspire to: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, there is something greater than humans in the universe: Planets for one. Of course, people should make smart well informed decisions that lead to not only their enlightenment, but the enlightenment of their peers and children as well. All of that is so simple it’s ridiculous.

Then all of the sudden those goals clash. People start thinking for themselves. Sometimes this is great and leads to innovation and epiphanies everyone can benefit from and sometimes there’s a greedy L.Ron Hubbard behind it all leaving the detached observer with a slightly foul taste for freedom of thought. Some people find ways to be inclusive and uplifting all at once, some people focus on inclusiveness to the point that everyone is left out, and some people decide they were better surrounded by homogeneity where the rules were clearly defined. Christopher Hutchens defaces disagreeable propaganda and gets beaten up. Am I to agree with Chris’s reason for being there, the beat down because sometimes Hutchens is intolerable, or cop out with the standard that beat downs are bad and demonstrably worse than writing on propaganda?

So people mix rules with ideal. The constitution gets a bill of rights. People should have freedoms but those freedoms are limited just as the rules are limited. The rules are the rules but there are so many instances where a rule breaker is a bona fide hero or at the very least someone who knows who they are better than I know who I am. There are probably more cases of the rules being broken for selfish and silly reasons.

When the focus is on rules, then the focus seems also to be on conformity. People have to play by the same rules or else the game falls apart. If my neighbors are socially destructive serial killers, then their rights are not very important to me. The people have to be enough like me where I can trust the rules to be upheld. And the rules are adjustable because after inspection some rules just aren’t very good just as others require more detail to get the job done. This job is informed by ideals.

When the focus is on ideals, then the focus seems to be on dissension. In order for you to be yourself, you have to be free to do things I would disapprove of. Because clearly, I do what makes sense for me and you are doing things differently. What do I care if you want to own guns? It’s a waste, but if you play by the rules you won’t shoot anybody. I can’t assume you will kill before you do, it’s not fair. I wouldn’t want that ray of pre-guilt to shine in my direction. Say anything you want including istic language, you’ll pay the price in social currency but you will preserve the essence of the freedoms I enjoy when I disagree with dogmatic practices in other venues such as government, or religion.

That sounds great and simple but then we run into the systematic cumulative effects of rules and ideals. Ideals inform rules. Some ideals suggest blindly following rules and others suggest blind dissension. All the sudden all the ideals and the rules in the world have added up to the created disadvantage of a type of people now relegated to other status. Then people still left in the in crowd spread notions reinforcing why those other people are other. That person is just sensitive.

Then the position is clearly wild. What can I say that will never offend someone and at the same time allow the expression of who I am in a temporal and fluid way? Nothing. This is because some viewpoints are just wrong and offending the holders is a byproduct of discussing the failings of those viewpoints. This is because sometimes I am wrong and I need to have my comfort zone removed along when the appropriate clarity is provided. And this is because I would rather know what my fellow people are thinking than live in the illusion of conformity.

Besides, I like being disagreeable somehow someway. That reinforces my self-perception as being more than willing to think for myself and to stumble through sensitive subjects until they make sense to me. I won’t provide quarter I don’t believe in. I will lie in social circles when I feel fitting in is the bigger purpose or I’ve judged my peers for the moment as being incapable of an intellectual. And I want you to be your gay self, your female self, your self of a different culture. We’ll find ways to handle the ways that we clash. Some jokes will be insensitive and funny because we recognize the characterization as absurd while simultaneously extending unwavering support for the individual. I won’t support your racist language, but I will give you a ride to work if you need one. And I do expect you to be you until the point you realize you need to change. I do expect you to vocalize your dissent because I want a world where dissent is possible and encouraged. I want the best ideas to win even if they aren’t mine.

And I’ll take my belief that all meaning is relative, and all truths are worthy of review and put them against yours any day. I’ll open my mind as wide as I possibly can. I’ll exercise all the freewill that I can even though I can’t prove that I have freewill and I can see clear limits that must exist. It’s not that God doesn’t exist and Islam is wrong, it’s that I can’t see why we jump to conclusions so faithfully because I love to hear the voice of disagreement and discussion. And I can’t help but see the world through my rosy colored glasses, look at my bloodshot eyes; world, you think way too many things for me to just be agreeing and you come up with too many advances for me to ignore them all.

It’s all fun and games until I’m suicide bombed, and until then get your vocalization on.

You say you know how life is supposed to be. The answers are as simple as fifty years of your perspective and genius that you are you figured it out at twenty. You say if we were meant to fly we would have been born with wings but you seem offended by the different things my generation can do with the parts we do have from birth. You say freedoms and then you get offended. You say religion is not a battlefield and I shouldn’t bring a war there. I say firing cannonballs in the direction of my liberties is no way to start a friendly conversation.

I say there is nothing that can be known so well. I say what is known is known based on review and consensus. I say all answers are at best work in progresses those work and progress so well previously unimaginable entertainment lays at the fingertips of most of us who possess even meager resources. I say nothing is as important as we imagine it is. There’s not much worth dying for except that which would lead you to a position where you aren’t really living.

You say the government is no better now than it was before November and I say you had eight years to mess the world up and you neither completely messed it up or put it back together again. It’s as if our government were busy doing something else. A government that does its job would be a miracle in and of itself and would probably produce much needed change.

Real change comes from the battleground. You don’t win a war where the sequel takes you out. That’s a loss that took some time to be realized. We didn’t win World War I for example because we helped create the circumstances that allowed Hitler to succeed to powers unimaginable. And we didn’t win World War II if that is what brought Joseph McCarthy his few retarded moments of power.

Real judgment can’t be made the morning after either. Perhaps we didn’t need the American revolution, but we got it and now we have to honor it. Perhaps we didn’t need the Civil War, but we learned we’ve got to live together at least in our fifty states. I don’t even know if America is all that great if you average it out per person or per square mile or something. But I don’t see any reason to throw the size advantage out the window, I think we should capture that benefit.

And when I curse your religion, and I do, especially when you aren’t around to be offended. I’m not cursing you. I’m cursing the troublesome effects by which you have all developed this mystical belief in something that is a little bit different to each one of you. And yet, you refuse to admit you’re following your own version of the beliefs you’ve adopted clearly indicating in one fell swoop that the tradition upon which you rest your faith is irrelevant and your ability to appreciate my take on things has eroded to a ridiculously atrophed state.

I consume people like you and spit them out slightly chewed and entirely miserable. You can’t win because you aren’t being true to yourself even if you are true to your habits. Because what are the odds a self contradicting text got it right, zero. And what are the odds that the one thing it got right was the existence of something extra material, zero. So why be that person in that belief system that reinforces your faith by drawing you to spend every waking moment working toward their cause? Don’t you know they are using your social impulses against you? And don’t you know you will never win against the likes of me.

And even if you get away from me, or impossibly defeat me. There are more. You can’t win because I am impatient, and hungry. So run.

I’ve seen evil. I’ve seen the evil of man and then I’ve seen Evil incarnate.

I grew up next to Evil and Evil would play using slightly different expression, ever so slightly cuter and perhaps even attractive. Without noticing the moral high ground I was toppling we played on the same field, on the same controllers and from the same playbooks. Evil wore a skirt and I never did.

Evil showed me things I could never have dreamt of in college except I already had an idea because I had seen the face of Evil on the Internet. Al Gore is Evil’s highway repair man. All roads lead to the faces of Evil. Evil is Rome incarnate. Incarnate is my favorite word and I’ve got this running thing where the last thing I say is the first thing in the next comparison. The first thing is the pattern incarnate! Mwa ha ha.

Evil was very sweet and supportive, but this relationship with Evil and I couldn’t last because there was more Evil to be had in the world. I try to stay away from evil but some days I just get the urge to wrestle with evil. Why is there evil in this world? And then I wake up with my evil rodder and I want to wrestle.

I have learned to embrace evil. I grab Evil from behind while she’s cooking and Evil responds, “I am trying to make horrible food to sustain your miserable existence longer and therefore perpetuate your suffering and yet you distract me.” And Evil giggles and turns red because Evil does that very cutely everytime Evil thinks I want to wrestle. It’s a good thing she can’t read my mind, she would be red all the time. It is certainly cute though.

I say, “Evil, you’ve known what you wanted when you began cooking while wearing a mini-skirt.” I guess that makes me the rooter of all Evil. For anyone reading who’s under 18, I don’t know what that means either; it was just a joke. Anyway, I’ve got a disproportionate of Evil in Atlanta right now, I’m waiting for the return of Evil to the middle Virginia region. Too many saints in the kitchen. If you can’t stand the heat, don’t look cute all red. And if you’re evil, shout out.

There once was a mighty firelord. He burnt with the brightest flames, warming an otherwise cold planet. He burnt warmly, inciting riots and wars, kindling passions and hope. He flew across the sky during the day, and slept in the earth at night when he wasn’t stirring the emotions of man.

I was there to see the day when the firelord fell in love. He didn’t see me at first as he flew by the city. But he saw this most radiant of women as she daydreamed while looking out across the sky. On her face played everything from wisdom to a child’s fancy. She was beautiful for being in her own world and certainly thinking complex and careful things that no man should disturb recklessly.

He slowed as he arced across the sky. She saw him and smiled and the day came to a standstill. Their eyes met and that they should be together would never be denied. But as his hand reached out to make some sort of contact of greeting and understanding he noticed how her hair singed and her skin blistered and he pulled back. He looked at the sky and howled. Flame shot from his lips and for the first time shooting stars went up and out of the atmosphere.

Spying me, he came back into a collected aspect. “Very well,” he said. “You will love her in my stead. But do fear my wrath if you should make her cross or frightened. And know that she loves me through you.”

She is beautiful. Her body, mind, and everything are magnificent. Her thoughts are complex and careful and should not be recklessly disturbed. I live with her great company and endless fear.